At 4.30am this morning the Occupy Galway camp was forcibly removed by Gardai and Council workers. At 1pm we held a public assembly with around 100 people in attendance. The mood at the assembly was one of determination and optimism and it was agreed by all that the fight is only just getting started!

A political struggle in a European nation of less than three million, largely ignored by other socialists in Europe, has nevertheless come to the fore in the capitalist media repeatedly since the late 1960s. This has been largely as a result of the the Basque people’s struggle for socialism and independence from the Spanish and French states, a struggle led for decades by Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, the marxist armed organisation better known by its acronym, ETA. The organisation reawakened Basque national consciousness, has worked with others for the restoration of Euskara, the Basque language, organised Basque workers and faced the repression of the General Franco dictatorship in the Spanish state. Famously, in 1973 it assassinated the Prime Minister of the state, Admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco’s right-hand man, which hastened the fragmentation of the dictatorship and its passage to partial democracy.

Presently we are being given a referendum on the 'Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union', ( the Fiscal Compact Treaty), this treaty lays out the 'conditions' of receiving a bailout from the European Stabilty Mechanism, which so far we are not being given a referendum on. These 3 aspects are inextricably intertwined, with the ESM being the mechanism, the article 136 TEFU amendment the instrument being used to enable the ESM to have a legal basis, while the fiscal compact treaty sets out the conditions for accessing finance through the ESM.

There are in fact 3 different aspects, only the last of which we are allowed a say on:
1. The article 136 TFEU amendment to the treaties.

For the past six months and longer once Libya had fallen to the NATO sponsored 'rebels', we have faced a continuous media onslaught about Syria with reports of protests, shootings, killings, attacks, bombing and so forth. The backdrop to the narrative is that this is part of the Arab Spring which started last year and it is a good thing overall. So many people are probably wondering what really has been happening, given that this is the same media that was cheer leading the Iraq war almost 10 years ago even though at least a million+ are now dead as a result. And yet somehow they want to imply that they are doing the right thing now. We should also recall that this is the same media that is promoting austerity and encouraging us to accept the blame for the mad years of the bubble and as a consequence we should pay up the €90 billion bailout and in the process see all the state services stripped to the bone. They are presenting the uncomplicated truth surely